Planting Sugar Snap Peas

I'm so behind in my gardening this spring. I've been traveling a lot for work, so my gardening time has been limited. I am about a month late in getting my peas planted. I don't feel too bad, because a fellow Indianapolis gardener, Minji at thyme2gardennow, posted last week that her peas had just come up. 

I always plant my peas along my picket fence so that the fence can serve as a trellis. I usually just poke a hole in the soil with my finger, but the soil is a little too compacted this year. Instead, I used a 3/4" drill spade that I slipped into an interchangable screwdriver. Making the right sized holes with it was easy.

I popped two peas into each hole since my pea seeds are old. The seeds are three years old, but pea seeds   are viable for 3 years according to the Colorado State University Cooperative Extension. After placing the peas in the hole, I added a little shake of inoculant to the hole. The inoculant has bacteria that help the pea seedlings to fix nitrogen. Using inoculant is suppose to give you stronger, more productive pea plants. I planted yesterday so that I wouldn't have to water. It rained last night and is supposed to rain throughout the day today. I often try to plant when I know there will be rain. I want my seeds and plants to get a long, soft, deep soaking.

This Year's Tomato Lineup

I have 13 different varieties of tomatoes that I'm planting this year.  I was planning on 14, but one variety didn't germinate.

Sweet Tangerine
Black from Tula
Russo's Sicilian Togetta
Chocolate Stripes
Japanese Trifele
Patano Romanesco
Azoychka
Red Alert
Mr. Stipey
Islea
Amish Paste
Early Chatham
Rutgers

Last year, I grew
Sweet Tangerine
Chocolate Stripes
Fred Limbaugh
1884
Yellowstone
Bloody Butcher
Blondkopfchen
Henderson's Wins All
Wolford's Wonder
Napa Grape
Italian Heirloom
Japanese Trifele
Black Cherry
Orange Russian
Stupice
Principe Borghese

I did a little taste and productivity test on all the tomatoes. I want to find the best tasting, most productive tomatoes for my garden. Last year, I tried several varieties and was won over by three different tomatoes:
Sweet Tangerine
Chocolate Stripes
Japanese Trifele

I saved seeds from all of my tomatoes. I kept a package each of Sweet Tangerine, Chocolate Stripes, and Japanese Trifele. I sent the rest of the seeds to www.wintersown.org. Trudi at Wintersown sends out free seeds, including tomato seeds to gardeners. I also asked for some tomato seeds. She allows requesters to choose 10 seed varieties and she tries to give them at least 5 packets of what they want. It's great to trade seeds for the cost of a couple of stamps rather than having to invest in several seed packs at the store for a much great amount of money.

A Tale of Two Tomatoes

Last year, I tried starting my tomatoes in Jiffy Mix. As you can see in the picture at the top, I got tiny scrawny, purple seedlings. They were 2-4 inches tall. The picture on the bottom shows my tomato seedlings this year that I started in peat pellets. They are 8-10 inches tall. Both photos were taken when the seedlings were about 6 weeks old. From now on, I'm going to stick with peat pellets.

My Growing Light Shelves

I use grow lights to start my seeds every year. I'm cheap frugal, so I decided to make my own instead of paying $100+ for a pre-made one. I bought a shelving unit, four fluorescent light fixtures, and eight grow fluorescent bulbs. I assembled the shelves and tied the light fixtures to the bottoms of the shelves with rubber coated wire. I put the lights on a timer because I can't remember to turn them on and off consistently. I've had great results with this set up for the past four years.

2010 Resolution #3: Seed Saving

My third resolution from 2010 was "I will save heirloom seeds from my annuals, perennials, vegetables, fruits, and herbs.  I will use these seeds next year and I will trade them with other gardeners so that I can get new varieties."

I saved seeds from my tomato plants. I saved enough that I was able to send 100+ packets of seeds to a seed exchange. This year, I will save other seeds, too.

A Little Garden Porn in the Afternoon

The seed catalogs are starting to come!!! My sister and I refer to these catalogs as garden porn because we spend hours pouring over all the pictures and descriptions. Since I teach, I am off on vacation for a couple of weeks. I am wasting way too much time going through all these catalogs.

I've already ordered some seeds from Territorial Seeds and Jung's. Of course I ordered them without looking to see what was left over from last year. I relied on my memory.  I'm sure that I will be surprised when I go through my seed box. I was just so excited that I couldn't wait to order seeds. Now the trick will be to hold off on planting the seeds until an appropriate time.

January's Garden To Do List

This month is about catching up on garden tasks that I put off and preparing for the new garden year.  I have already ordered my seeds from Jung's and Territorial Seed Company.  I also have some tomato seeds that I saved from my favorite varieties from last summer. I have a lot of extra seeds that I saved and packaged. I will mail them to Trudi at www.wintersown.org. She will redistribute them to gardeners for free.

In addition to ordering seeds, I need to plant two sacks of daffodil bulbs that are sitting on my clothes dryer.  I intended to plant them last month but we got an early snow. Nothing says "happy holidays" like standing out in the middle of the first ice storm of the year trying to plant daffodil bulbs before the ground becomes too frozen to dig. The weather forecast for this week suggests that we will have a couple of days with above freezing temperatures.  Maybe I can use this opportunity to plant the bulbs in my garden.  If not, I can always pot them up, put them in the garage, and force them in April.

Some clean up tasks are also on my agenda.  Since we had an early snow this year, I didn't get a chance to finish cleaning up my yard.  I need to tidy up the garden a bit and I definitely need to mulch the north side of my house.  On the north side, I don't get much sun, so very little grows there.  I have dogs and they like to run through this area, which I call the dog corridor, to get to the front part of the house.  They like to bark at people and other animals that like to walk on 'their' sidewalk.  Unfortunately, since there is no ground cover to speak of on the north side of the house, it becomes a muddy mess whenever there is a thaw.  I usually place large chunks of pinebark mulch to cover the ground on this side of the house.  The mulch keeps my dogs from loading up their fur with mud and tracking it into the house.  The mulch is thin, so I need to add a half dozen or so bags to cover the thin and bare spots.  Today looks like it might be a good day to get all of this done.

Jung's Order

I received my first seeds of the year today. I ordered them from Territorial Seeds a couple of days ago. They were fast in getting the order out! I ordered the following seeds:

Edamame (bush beans-Sayamusume): I ordered the edamame because it's one of my favorite vegetables when I eat out at Japanese restaurants.  I want to try to grow them myself. Since they are often steamed after being frozen, I assume that they will be even better fresh.

Celery (Redventure): The red and yellow stalks of this celery are what called to me as I was browsing through the catalog. When I grew celery last year, I grew a green celery that was self-blanching. Unfortunately, I got more leaves than stalk.  The celery made great soup but there wasn't much substance for munching. I'll have to read up on celery so that I can avoid this problem this year.

Cucumber (Lime Crisp): I chose this variety because it is supposed to be both sweet and crisp.

Eggplant (Fairy Tale): Fairy Tale is a pretty purple and white small eggplant that isn't supposed to have the bitterness of other eggplants.

Strawberry (Italian Alpine): I want to grow alpine strawberries because of their sweet taste and clumping (rather than spreading) habit. I will plant them in my flower border because my strawberry pots always dry out. I've never grown strawberries from seed, so any suggestions are particularly encouraged!

Broccoli (Apollo Hybrid): I dislike broccoli as a general rule because I think that it tastes bitter. However, I really like broccolini. Supposedly, Apollo will prolifically produce the side shoots that are sold as broccolini. I grew Apollo last year and didn't have very heavy production. I think that I didn't water the plants enough.

Heliotrope: My mom loved heliotrope and grew it every year. I, too, love the way that it smells, but I think that it is too expensive for an annual. I'll try growing it from seed this year and see what happens.  Maybe I'll get lucky.

Sowing Carrots

On someone's blog somewhere, I saw a terrific idea for sowing tiny seeds. I would like to give the person credit, so if someone out there has seen this idea on another blog, please let me know. On this blog, the person showed how to make her own seed strips. I decided to try this idea out myself.
[Update:  The idea comes from Annie's Granny's website.  You should totally check her out.  She's definitely a gardening goddess! I steal ideas only from the best gardeners ; )  ]

First I place dots on a napkin with a marker about an inch an a half apart.

Then I placed tiny dots of non-toxic, washable glue on each marker spot.

I used a screw to pick up small amounts of seed since I didn't have any toothpicks. I dipped the screw in a little glue to help the seeds stick to it.

Finally, I placed 2-3 seeds on each dot.

I'll let the seed mat dry and sometime next week, I'll place the mat in my garden and water thoroughly.  I'll keep you posted on how this works out.  It will be nice not to have to waste so much seed and not to have to thin out the carrots.

Bush Beans

Mondays and Tuesdays are my busiest days.  I did manage to get outside for a brief period of time to plant some bush beans.  

I purchased a package of a Burpee bush bean mix that contains three varieties: greensleeves (green), royal burgundy (purple), and super wax (yellow). They will all turn green when cooked, but I like that they are different colors.  I'm planting bush beans because I don't want to have to find something for them to climb on. I will also probably plant some scarlet runner beans along my picket fence because they have such pretty flowers. 

Bush beans need to be planted about 3 inches apart.  The space from the base of my thumb to the knuckle in my index finger is about 3 inches, so that's how I measured the planting distance.

I poked a hole in the soil with the tip of my index finger. Then, I planted the beans about an inch deep. I forgot to add a light sprinkle of inoculant, but it's not absolutely necessary.  Since I am planting a couple of bean plants every week for several weeks to ensure continuous harvest, I'll try to remember to add the inoculant next time.

I Gave Up on the Celery

I tried to start celery from seed.  I sowed the seeds in February and placed them under fluorescent shop lights.  My other seedlings did just fine.  I even started taking them outside on warm days to give them as much natural light as I could and they still look puny.  

My pathetic celery seedlings

I had a bunch of meetings off campus yesterday.  I had about 30 minutes to burn and there was a nice garden center between meeting spots.  I couldn't help myself.  I really have little self-control at garden centers.  I bought some stevia, some pink poodle echinacea, sedum for a porch pot, and 12 beautiful celery plants. I'm a total celery cheater.

My beautiful new celery

I'm feeling both giddy and a little guilty about buying the celery plants, but I have little hope for the seedlings that I started.  If there's anyone out there who successfully grows celery from seed, I would love to hear your celery starting secrets.

Surprise Lettuce

I let my lettuce go to seed once the weather got hot last year.  I intended to collect the seed, but I never got around to it.  I didn't need to collect the seed.  It has sown itself.  Good Old Mother Nature is much sharper and a lot less lazy than I am.

This lettuce looks like it might be red sails.

I have no idea which lettuce this one is.

The sad part is that these lettuces look much better than the ones I started inside a couple of weeks ago.  I guess the lesson here is that I will do better with my lettuce if I direct sow it than if I try to start it early inside.

Potting Up Matt's Tomatoes

 

I had to thin out the seedlings that Matt gave to me. The black cherry tomato pot had more than 25 seedlings.

First, I poured a high quality seedling mix (NOT what I used when all my seedlings turned purple and grew scrawny) into a large pot to make potting easier.

Then I took the hunk of seedlings out of the pot and gently teased individual seedlings out of the root clump, trying to get as much root as possible with each seedling. I removed the lower leaves from the seedlings.

I chose the strongest looking seedlings with the largest clump of roots to pot up since I had so many seedlings.  Tomato plants will grow roots along their stems if the stems are buried, so it is a good idea to bury a good portion of the stem when tomato seedlings are potted up.  I buried a good 3-4" of stem for each tomato plant.

I ended up with 18 black cherry tomatoes.  I'll  use a couple of them and give the rest away to friends, neighbors, and gardeners who come to the Central Indiana Plant Swap.

Thank Goodness for Friends LIke Matt

When my friend, Matt, heard about my purple tomato seedling plight, he brought his extra tomato seedlings into work for me.

He brought me:
bloody butcher
roma
golden pineapple
brandywine
black cherry
orange Russian
black krim

Tonight, I will watch Butler beat Duke and divide the seedlings into their own pots. [Update:  Okay, maybe I was wrong about this, but Butler did put up a good fight.]

This is such a sweet offer.  Thanks, Matt!!!  You're the best!!!!

Planting in the Rain

I was excited this morning to sow my greens and carrots in the alley bed.  As soon as I stepped outside, I felt a couple of raindrops.  I thought that I could at least get some of the seeds sown before the rain started to come down hard, and if I were lucky, the rain would remain light.

I really wanted to sow my sweet mesclun mix, gourmet mesclun mix, herb salad mix, spinach, kaleidoscope carrot mix, and nantes carrots.

So, I loaded up the wheel barrow which already had soil from edging the beds in it, and I wheeled it back to the end of the alley.

I got four rows in before the rain started coming down hard and I was beginning to feel soggy.  I gave up and will have to finish the sowing tomorrow.

I was able to take off my wet clothes, but unfortunately my garden helpers have to stay in the laundry/dog/mud room until they are dry enough to come into the rest of the house.  They are NOT happy about it, either.

Scrawny, Purple Tomato Seedlings

I'm on my third year of growing tomatoes from seed. The last two years everything went well and I grew strong, healthy beautiful tomato plants in peat pellets. This year, I read a lot of negative commentary about peat pellets and some great commentary about a particular kind of seed starting mix, so I thought that I would try this mix. I thought that I might get even better plants.  

Well, I should have left well enough alone. The tomato seedlings that I planted in the seed starting mix are puny and have a purple hue, while the seedling started in the left over peat pellets are thriving.

Look at the difference between tomatoes growing in the two different planting media.  The tomatoes on the left were started two weeks before the ones on the right in the seed starting mix while the plants on the right were started in peat pellets.

Close up of a seed mix seedling

A close up of the peat pot seedling

Last week, I added a small amount of organic Plant-Tone (a 5-3-3 balance) to the sickly looking seedlings. I figured that they probably had some sort of nutritional deficiency.  It doesn't seem to be making a difference, so I asked my neighbor (a landscape designer) what I should do.  She told me that the plants probably need phosphorus.  She only has synthetic fertilizers.  Does anyone out in the blogosphere have any suggestions for a good organic source of phosphorus?  I could try bone meal, but it is so slow acting.  Is there another source of organic phosphorus that is faster acting?  Is it worth trying to save these seedings, or should I just start some more plants from seed in the peat pellets?

I think that next year, I will go back to what has worked well for me in the past....

Lettuce Thinning

When I set up my light for seed growing, I decide to start some lettuces inside so that I could get some a little earlier.  No matter how careful I am, I typically sow the seeds too heavily.  I really needed to thin out the lettuce.  The weather has been great for the past couple of weeks, with highs in the 50s and 60s, and the 10 day forecast suggests that the weather will remain fairly warm.  Since I had nothing to lose, I decided to take the lettuces that I thinned and transplant them to some outdoor pots.

I mixed up some nice planting mixture from some chopped up leaves, compost, and the remains of last year's annuals pots.

Then I place the mixture into some pots that I have.  I made holes with my finger in the soil mixture and place individual seedlings that I culled from my lettuce starts into the holes.

Finally, I watered the seedling with a little water in which I had soaked some willow branches.  The willow tea promotes root growth.

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Saving Tomato Seeds

My friend, Matt, is so smart.  He just gave me some tomato seeds that he saved in a unique way:

He just scooped tomato seeds onto labelled index cards, guts and all.  Then he let them dry.  When it's time to plant them, you just need to flick the seeds off the card.  He was careful with the seed cards.  He stored them in a paper envelope.  I was a little more careless because I transported them to my house loose in my purse.  I lost a couple of cherry tomato seeds, but not many.

Too bad I didn't have more varieties which seeds fell off in my purse.  I would have played the tomato mystery game by planting the seeds and trying to guess which tomatoes would come from which plants.  This is similar to the game that I play in the spring with the volunteer tomatoes in my garden.

We had a strange coincidence last year.  When it came time to trade seeds, we ended up having  8 of 10 of the same heirloom varieties.  We didn't plan our seed buying in advance and we bought from different sources.  This year, we only have a couple of varieties in common.

Planting Sugar Snap Peas

Since Daylight Savings Time began, I have a good amount of time after work in which I can garden.  After work today, I really got a lot accomplished.  I planted sugar snap peas, onions, and shallots.  I also got some weeding accomplished in the process.

I mixed my sugar snap pea into my perennial bed along the fence and I also planted some in the hidden garden at the end of the alley.  I have invested a lot of energy (lasagna garden with an annual mulching of chopped up leaves and composted horse bedding) in creating some terrific soil in my perennial bed, so planting was easy:

First, I made a hole with my finger.  Peas need to be planted about 1" deep.  The distance between the tip of my finger and my first knuckle is about 1", so making a hole at the correct depth with my finger is easy.

Then I dropped a pea in the hole and covered it up.

In my perennial bed, the peas will climb the fence. In the hidden garden, they will climb some tree branches that I scavenged from the lot.

March Garden Calendar

In my efforts to become more organized, I am creating a month by month to-do list for my garden.  So far this month, I have planted most of my seeds that can be started indoors, pruned my shrubs, and started some of my potatoes outside.

My very basic garden calendar

This year's seeds

Flats of seeds that will go on my light shelves

This first half of the month, I still need to remove the mulch from my front yard beds, over-seed the lawn, and edge my garden beds.  The second half of the month, I will direct sow my onions, garlic, shallots, peas, potatoes, and spinach.  Then I will begin installing a watering system for my garden.